The Undiscovered Country

A few thousand feet down the asphalt road beyond the village of Orikumi, along with a wiry adventurer I had known less than 72 hours, I vaulted the tremendous rear wheel of an oversized pickup to hitch a ride to the next town. No words were exchanged with the burly driver; at least, no words we could understand. In seconds he slammed on the accelerator, and we blazed toward that unreachable horizon. Chris and I white-knuckled the frame as crisp mountain air threatened to return us to motionless Earth. We thundered deeper into this foreign, third-world interior. We clutched our worthless phrasebooks. We gaped indefatigably at the raw, ineffable beauty of Albania, the undiscovered country.

As geographers will note, tiny Albania is squeezed down in that mess of nations piled between the Slavic and Turkic worlds. Statistically speaking, the place is utterly forgettable: a couple of million inhabitants, a relatively but not necessarily curiously isolated language, ex-Communist but never a particularly dangerous rogue state, and now the (ho-hum) second poorest country in Europe. I never intended to go; honestly, I’d never even heard of Albania before I arrived on the continent. If it were not for a random Internet stumbling, I would not have met up with a Belgian computer science postdoc with a slight obsession for completing his collection of visited lands. “Doctor” Chris, as I always meant to call him, posted his itinerary on a Lonely Planet message board and I took the bait.

After a flurry of emails back when I was in England (or somewhere!), I purchased a round trip ticket from Budapest to Tirana (exotic!) and arranged to meet the good professor when I alighted in the airport. I’d already taken a roller coaster ride through sterility and squalor from Austria into Hungary, and the final leg on Malev airlines deposited me at a chintzy, pipsqueak terminal. This is Albania’s only international gateway---probably the only public runway in the whole kingdom. I chuckled out loud as the twin engine banked toward the proudly lettered, oversized lighted sign. It read “Mother Theresa Airport”.

With such an iconic name, one might expect giant hangings and lifelike statues of the renown nun, plus Catholic gift shops and monastically-themed baked goods. Not so. This is a plain, whitewashed glass building, not even large enough for an unpopular tennis match. It's understaffed and unremarkable, except for a single notable amenity. Mother Theresa Airport has one of Albania's only ATMs.
The famous apostle was actually born in nearby Macedonia, but given the limited size of their talent pool, I’m willing to cut the Albanians some slack. Their embellishments, however, should come as no surprise. There’s apparently a natural law which states that the smaller the nation, the richer their history, the grander their heroes, the deeper their pride. The story of Albania would unfold during our brief visit, but as I passed through airport security, I was chiefly apprehensive about meeting my new travel companion and confirming I was even welcome here.

All was well. After a restful night at a small hotel literally down the road from the airport, Chris and I loaded into a pre-arranged cab with a slightly shady, self-styled tour guide. The hour-long ride to downtown Tirana formed an abrupt and indelible impression of this land and these people. This is a nation racing through three centuries of industrialization and urbanization in the span of a lean decade. Everywhere, hallmarks of a bright future scuttle by remnants of a harsh and timeless past. These are a people too occupied with manufacturing to sweep away debris; too obsessed with fashion and individual wealth to clean up the oceans of trash.

We inched in congestion along Albania’s only divided highway, a brief stretch of concrete between Tirana and Durres. Our cab shared the road with listlessly strolling itinerant laborers. The rush hour jams stem from the countries cancerous economic growth  almost all the cars here belong to first time owners. The deficient infrastructure is actually a blessing. If the country had better, smoother roads and a free-flow of traffic, the mushrooming population of inexperienced drivers would surely claim each other’s lives.

Finally we rolled into the streets of Albania’s capital. This metropolis trembles with the same schizophrenic and tumultuous character of the nation’s recent history. It is a city under construction. Seemingly every block boasts a growing, spindly skeleton or a pile of rubble. The wide avenues are half dirt and half manicured boulevards, having leapfrogged the natural progression through road surface technologies. The rare complete edifices mostly typify the stifling, drab blockhouses associated with communist Europe, but painted over in outrageous, jarring colors in fierce protest to their oppressive creators. Tirana is neither ugly nor beautiful---it is merely unnervingly raw.

Chris and I checked into our top floor room in another clean but makeshift hotel near the city center. Storm clouds crammed into the nodules of sky between Tirana’s fresh and forgotten girders. Guidebooks in hand, excitement unbridled, we slugged through the mud toward our fate. Thus began our eight days in the undiscovered country.